Dragons have proven incredibly popular for players both as a craftable goal and as powerful end-game companions. We want to bring this excitement and challenge to the Weapon and Armor slots as well. Today, we are announcing a set of new weapons and armor unlike any others!

Coming soon, you will have EIGHT new craftable peerless items that we have been internally referring to as “Epic” items. These Epic items, four weapons and four armor, have power similar to Baby Dragons. Like dragons, your Hand slot and Body slot will each have an item with balanced Battle/Trade/Intrigue stats, as well as three items each focused on one of the primary stats. One difference from dragons is that there is no “colorizing” process from the items. Each item is crafted separately so that you can choose where to focus your efforts. But crafting these items will not be easy to achieve! We expect it will be quite some time before players have multiples of each item.

Please note, these are NOT the AvA items you’ll be able to craft with AvA tokens; those AvA rewards are new items that we’ll be discussing in the coming weeks!

Like dragons, each of these items require a peerless item to begin. They evolve from existing peerless items and turn into more powerful versions of themselves. With your Burning Sword, you may evolve it into Lightbringer, Red Sword of Heroes. Or, you can take your Red Viper’s Spear and evolve it into the Spear of Oberyn, the Red Viper.

In addition to large bonuses to either Attack or Defense, each item has three other stats:

Like dragons, while these items share some similar stats, they will have slightly different stats between them.

Why these specific items? It was important to us that the items be recognizable and iconic. Some of your items, like the Ancestral Valyrian Steel Greatsword, are very in-fiction and exciting, but we want to keep that particular item open for the future. The four weapons we picked all had the Game of Thrones flavor that everyone who joins our game looks for. That’s not to say that we won’t add more epic variants or items in the future; we’ll be looking to you, our players, to give us feedback on where to next take your items.

Epic Recipes

You will soon be able to find the Epic item recipes in the Holdfast, Workshop, and Treasury.

The recipes to evolve your items are NOT luck-based, and require three components: The existing Peerless item that will be “evolved”, three peerless items from one of the fealty buildings, and either six Valyrian Steel Ingots or six Exalted Elixirs.

You can win new Valyrian Steel Shards and Alchemical Reagents from adventures, as well as Tales rewards and eventually AvA threshold rewards. From these shards and reagents you may produce a Valyrian Steel Ingot from 8 Shards in the Holdfast, or an Exalted Elixir from 8 Reagents in the Workshop. These are not luck-based recipes, and will always produce an Exalted Elixir or Ingot.

We put these items in adventures that were run very rarely - less than 0.3% of all Adventures - and removed legacy items from World Events from those adventures. Some adventures are lower-level, with relatively lower drop rates. As you complete higher-difficulty Adventures, you have a higher chance of getting these items. You can get these new items from the following adventures:

The crucial crafting requirement for each of these recipes are three peerless items from a fealty building. For Lightbringer, Red Sword of Heroes, you’ll need to craft three Master Crafted Warhammers from the Feast building. Those three Master Crafted Warhammers will be consumed during crafting. Once you have those three Master Crafted Warhammers and the six Ingots you need, you can evolve your Burning Sword into Lightbringer. All seals and your name will be carried over from the core item to your new item (the crafted peerless items are consumed). To be clear, you’ll always craft one of these new items if you have the ingredients.

When you make one of these items, it will be a cause for celebration and deliver an extremely powerful item for your lord.

A note for players who have not reincarnated: This update does not provide a way to craft the fealty peerless items outside of the fealty buildings. There may be other ways to get these peerless items in the future, either in the shop or in some other way, but there is no equivalent to the Dragon Pit for these items - at least not yet.

Epic Weapons - Coming Next Week!

Epic weapons are coming in next week’s build, alongside the new Alchemical Reagents and Valyrian Steel Shards, their recipes, and the new item recipes. Each item features upgraded stats and all-new art. The four weapons are:

The Burning Sword transforms into Lightbringer, Red Sword of Heroes. Continuing the trend of being a strong all-around weapon, Lightbringer improves on the core stats of the Burning Sword, as well as adding in a 10% bonus to all attacks and a 4% bonus to Sworn Sword experience. Designed to be a fantastic all-around weapon, it is the legendary blade of Azor Ahai.

After Jamie Lannister lost his hand, he had a finely-tooled golden hand presented to him in King’s Landing. Faced with the loss of one of his most treasured objects - his hand - he pressed onward with his sword skills. Golden Hand of the Kingslayer adds bonuses to all Trade attacks, and is faster when completing quests and adventures. It also provides a bonus to silver gain, including from PtP attacks like barters, and grants more experience to your Sworn Swords when they complete Trade actions.

Spear of Oberyn, the Red Viper

Intrigue Weapon

Building: Workshop

Recipe: The Red Viper’s Spear + 6 Exalted Elixir + 3 Nobleman’s Coat

Click to enlarge

The Red Viper’s Spear was first seen in Season Four of Game of Thrones. Immediately, we were struck by the intricate tool-work around the spear, and our artist did a great job in capturing Oberyn’s motions in the duel. With the Spear of Oberyn, the Red Viper, we focused on the intrigue aspect of the spear. Used to poison Gregor Clegane, the Mountain, the evolved version of the spear brings greater Intrigue damage, greater speed, retains the chance to wound defenders, and adds Sworn Sword experience for your Intrigue actions.

Oberyn’s Spear is already a powerful weapon, and choosing to focus on Intrigue will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows in the community. Who knows what future weapons could be created from these blades? Perhaps more Battle items will come in the future!

Ice, Sword of the North

Battle Weapon

Building: Holdfast

Recipe: Ice + 6 Valyrian Steel Ingot + 3 Master Crafted Longbow

Click to enlarge

Ice is only seen a few times in the show: used by Ned Stark to execute a deserter from the wall, then used to execute Ned Stark himself, it was melted down after it’s pivotal role on the execution stand. Our inspiration for Ice, Sword of the North was that of an ancient sword, passed down for generations from Stark to Stark, used in the dark times to protect the northerners with blood and steel. By evolving Ice into its epic variant, you’ll gain greater Battle attack, faster speed, add experience to your Sworn Swords in Battle, and do more damage in Boss and Alliance Challenges.

Epic Armor - Coming Soon!

Epic “armor” will be coming soon. While they’re not all strictly armor, they are all items you can equip in your body slot. More details on these items will be given out when they’re closer to release.

Epic Items Start Next Week!

Starting next week, you’ll see four epic items in the game: Ice, Sword of the North; Lightbringer, Red Sword of Heroes; Golden Hand of the Kingslayer; and Spear of Oberyn, the Red Viper. You’ll also see Valyrian Steel Shards and Alchemical Reagents added to adventures next week, in addition to recipes to forge them into the Exalted Elixirs and Valyrian Steel Ingots, and recipes to craft these epic weapons.

Thanks for reading, and get ready for next week!

P.S. - Yes, this is the "something special" that we had for next week! But that doesn't mean your speculations about an AvA test are wrong - we'll be giving details on that very soon!